


To Let it Occur (Laisser-Faire la Nature)

by dannyPURO



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: A little angst, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff and Smut, Just Two Sweet Young Fellows, Language Barrier, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Too-Long Layovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 00:43:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18981691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dannyPURO/pseuds/dannyPURO
Summary: Feuilly seriously needs to get rid of his “never-spend-any-money” impulse now that he has, like, a real income.Don’t get him wrong--it’s a perfectly functional, oftentimes useful habit, and he’d certainly needed it in the past (or, like, for his entire life, up until eight months ago, when a gallery in New York picked up his fans and they started selling). So, it’s not bad. Saving money is a good thing, actually. Almost always.It’s just that sometimes, he ends up in situations like a fucking forty hour layover in Paris on his way back to Warsaw, and for real, he didn’t even know they made layovers that long.Or, forty-plus-eight hours Feuilly spent in Paris.





	1. Forty Hours

Feuilly seriously needs to get rid of his “never-spend-any-money” impulse now that he has, like, a real income.

Don’t get him wrong--it’s a perfectly functional, oftentimes useful habit, and he’d certainly needed it in the past (or, like, for his entire life, up until eight months ago, when a gallery in New York picked up his fans and they started selling). So, it’s not _bad._ Saving money is a good thing, actually. Almost always.

It’s just that sometimes, he ends up in situations like a fucking forty hour layover in Paris on his way back to Warsaw, and for real, he didn’t even know they made layovers that long.

He gets off his flight at Charles de Gaulle jetlagged, starving, on edge, and seriously regretting his decision not to spring for a direct flight. God, forty hours. What does one even do with forty hours of free time?

Feuilly really needs to get used to not working nonstop. This is good. Free time is good. He should relax. He should relax, and spend more money.

He should relax and spend more money in an overpriced airport restaurant, probably, which also remedies the fact that he is _starving._

Of course, the fact that he speaks so little French he can hardly read the menu, let alone order, complicates things somewhat, but he (probably) orders something to do with salmon and thanks God that he spent so much time learning English.

“You’re British?”

Feuilly jumps, nearly spills his water, turns to look at the man at the table beside him, and-

And kind of maybe freezes, his mouth gaping half-open, his hands still covering his glass where he scrambled to right it. Because this guy is… he’s _gorgeous._ He’s got fine, stern features, and big, wide eyes, and lips to die for, and a halo of golden curls falling from his bun to frame his face, and a concerned furrow to his perfect brow that makes Feuilly want to die of embarrassment. “What?” he chokes out, when he can manage it.

The man gestures at Feuilly in an awkward little manner that feels like it ought to clash with that face but really, really doesn’t. “British? Are you-”

Feuilly shakes his head, struggling to keep up. “No, no, I’m not- I’m Polish. I don’t think French waiters speak much Polish, though, and I don’t know French, so… English.”

He’s frowning. “I’m sorry, I don’t…” he pauses, furrows that brow a little more. “Polish? _Polonais_?

Oh, of course the most beautiful man Feuilly has ever met would only speak a different language. Of course he’d be fucking French or something. “Polish, yeah. Yeah.”

And then the man grins, and all Feuilly can think is that it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, so long as he’s smiling like that.

He extends a hand. “My name is Enjolras.”

Feuilly shakes it, tries the name in his own mouth. “Enjolras.” It comes out wrong, nowhere near as beautiful as when Enjolras said it, but Enjolras keeps smiling.

“Almost,” he says. “Close.”

“Oh, don’t lie to make me feel better.” That crease in Enjolras’s brow is back, so Feuilly waves a hand and carries on. “I’m Feuilly.”

“Feuilly.” God, it isn’t right that Feuilly’s name sounds better than it ever has on Enjolras’s tongue. “That’s French. Not Polish.”

Feuilly shrugs, bites back a smile. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Maybe you are French.”

“I don’t think I am.”

Enjolras takes a bite of his salad. “It’s sad.”

Feuilly can’t help it--he huffs a laugh, and Enjolras snickers around his fork, and then they’re both laughing far too hard for the situation until the waiter comes back with Feuilly’s food.

God, Enjolras is pretty.

They eat in silence, for the most part. There are a few times, Feuilly is pretty sure, where Enjolras nearly says something, but then he stops, sighs, takes another bite of salad.

Feuilly has never wished he could speak another language so much in his life.

After twenty minutes of those strange little start-stops, Enjolras pulls his phone out of his bag, does some frantic typing, then sets it back down. “Do you work?” he asks.

Feuilly swallows his bite of fish, nods. “I’m an artist. I make these… these painted, carved fans. They’re actually doing pretty well, all of a sudden.”

“Fans?”

“Yeah, like-” he digs his phone out of his bag, opens the photo app, and normally, he would never do this. He would never show off like this, never show his art to a stranger, but this is… This is different. Enjolras is different. And if he wants to show off to impress this beautiful French man? Well, that’s his right. “Here, like this.”

Enjolras cautiously takes the phone from Feuilly with those bony, delicate hands of his and looks close, swiping slowly from photo to photo. And Feuilly keeps waiting for him to pass the phone back after a few more, but he holds tight and scrolls through the whole album before handing it back. Their fingers brush. “That’s…” he clears his throat. “Feuilly, _c’est incroyable. Ils sont très, très, très beaux.”_

Feuilly is pretty sure he knows what that means. He feels a hot flush rising to his cheeks. “Thanks, Enjolras, I-”

Enjolras shakes his head--looking, all of a sudden, incredibly intense--and takes Feuilly’s hands between his own before Feuilly has the chance to--well, he would hardly say _no,_ but he didn’t have time to think on it, anyways, before Enjolras is looking deep into his eyes. “Amazing. Very amazing.”

It’s possibly that Feuilly doesn’t breathe from the moment Enjolras takes his hands to four or five seconds after he lets go. “I-” He swallows. “So what do you do? Where do you work?”

Enjolras, surprisingly, looks a little flustered, too. “I am an activist,” he says. “I activate.”

Feuilly tries not to laugh, but when he looks up, Enjolras has cracked a little smile, so he’s pretty sure the slip-up was on purpose. “That’s good. That’s awesome.”

Enjolras nods. “And I write. For journals, sometimes.” He pauses, self corrects. “Newspapers.” He’s finished his salad, Feuilly notices, but he doesn’t seem too inclined to get up and leave. Thank God.

He eats what’s left of his salmon as slow as he feels he can get away with. Call him easy, or whatever, but he’d kind of do anything to be able to read something Enjolras wrote.

“Do you fly from Poland? Or to Poland?” Enjolras asks him, and now that the waiter has come by and whisked his plate away, he crosses his hands atop the table and leans in in a way that’s kind of killing Feuilly.

He shakes his head. “Neither, actually. I was in New York for a while working with a gallery, and I’ve got a layover here for, like, a million hours on my way back to Warsaw.”

Enjolras is frowning at him again. “I’m sorry, I don’t-”

Feuilly tries again. “From America, to Warsaw. I was there for art.”

He nods, but there’s still a crease in his brow. “But we are in Paris.” He huffs a stray curl from where it had been hanging in his face.

“It’s a layover. It’s, um… Two flights. New York to Paris, then Paris to Warsaw. It’s cheaper.”

The smile drops from Enjolras’s cheeks, and Feuilly curses himself for whatever the hell he did. “You don’t stay? In Paris?” He’s looking at Feuilly just a little too… too… something. It’s a lot.

Feuilly finds himself shaking his head frantically. “I’m not leaving right away. It’s a super long layover. Forty hours.” And suddenly, he’s grateful for it, too.

Enjolras nods again, slowly. “How many?”

Enjolras has a pen stuck into his bun, like he shoved it in there earlier in the day and forgot about it, and Feuilly’s reaching for it before he can stop himself. He freezes, drops his hand. “Sorry, I- You-” He gives up, gestures to his own hair. “You have a pen.”

“Oh!” Enjolras says, like he hadn’t realized, and he turns a little. “Yes, okay.”

And, okay, Feuilly had assumed Enjolras would pass it over himself, but this works, too. He reaches back over and gently, gingerly pulls at the pen. The clip catches on a curl--both Feuilly and Enjolras wince, and Enjolras hisses something in French--and then Enjolras is reaching up to help and his skin is warm and soft where their hands brush and Feuilly gets the pen but he can’t breathe, so…

Feuilly clears his throat, scrawls _40_ on the napkin he got from the airplane as neat as he can manage. “Forty hours.”

“Forty hours. Okay.” Enjolras taps a finger on the number. “You can see Paris.”

And Feuilly nearly shrugs it off, nearly says, _Paris is expensive,_ or some shit like that, but then he remembers that he’s trying to stop doing that so much, and also that Enjolras is watching him with that piercing, hopeful gaze of his, so he nods. “I guess so. I don’t know how else I’ll pass the time.”

“Hmm.” Again, Enjolras makes as though to speak, then stops--only, this time, he doesn’t have a salad to pick at, so he just stares down at the airplane napkin and the _40_ Feuilly put there and looks oddly pensive.

“So, where are you going?” Feuilly asks, when it becomes clear that Enjolras is not going to say whatever it is that he was going to.

Enjolras looks up. “Paris. From Quebec today. But I’m home in Paris.”

“You’re staying?” He can’t help but to smile a little.

“Yes. More than you, _quand même._ ” He pauses; Feuilly is starting to get the impression that he does that a lot. “In fact, there is- My friend has a party. Because I am in Paris again. Tonight. If you want to see Paris.”

Feuilly can’t really believe his ears. “You want me to go with you?” he asks.

Enjolras flushes a deep, violent pink. “You know, it-” He breaks off, gestures vaguely, then buries his face not-too-subtly in his hands. “I-” He lets out a frustrated noise.

“Do you want me to come?” Feuilly asks again, because… he can’t make a fool of himself in front of Enjolras (who may be basically a stranger but who is also totally more than that already), and he can’t… he needs to know.

Enjolras shrugs. “Do you want?”

Feuilly takes a deep breath. “Yes. Yeah, I’d really like that, Enjolras.”

Enjolras grins. “Good. Good.

Feuilly pays for his salmon. (It’s far more expensive than it ought to be.) Enjolras gathers his effects. They both stand.

“ _Retrait des bagages?”_ Enjolras asks, when they’re both standing and looking at each other expectantly.

“What?”

Enjolras points up at a sign. _“Retrait des bagages?_ Bags?”

“Oh!” God, sometimes Feuilly feels so dumb. “Yes, yeah, I need to grab my suitcase. Retrait des bagages.”

Enjolras laughs quietly. “ _Retrait des bagages,_ ” he says, again, copying Feuilly’s mangled French.

“Oh, don’t start,” Feuilly says, but honestly, at this point, he’s pretty sure that Enjolras could do just about anything and it would be wonderful.

 

And so Feuilly goes to the party. He and Enjolras take the train back into Paris (“I do not drive,” Enjolras had explained, “I am bad,”) and the Metro from there, and they’re standing at the door of a beautiful old apartment when Enjolras says--soft, like everything he says-- “My friends, they speak English. It is not all…” He gestures at himself. “Yes?”

Feuilly nods, even though he, personally, can’t see to find a single flaw with anything to do with Enjolras. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

The door opens. “Enj!” Someone shouts, and then, in an instant, Enjolras has got a short, curly-headed man clinging to him like a barnacle and speaking rapid-fire French. Enjolras staggers for a moment, then hugs back and laughs.

Feuilly stands back and watches and thinks real hard about how different Enjolras looks with that goofy grin on his face. He’s brought back at the appearance of a tall, well-dressed (if slightly rumpled) man in the doorway.

“ _Enj_ ,” he says, a matching smile on his face. “ _C’est qui ton ami?”_

Enjolras disentangles himself from his barnacle, lets the man pull him into an embrace. “ _Feuilly. Je lui ai rencontré à l'aéroport.”_

 _“Ah, oui?”_ He looks endlessly bemused, and Feuilly is pretty sure he knows what they’re saying, but he wishes he could understand, anyways.

_“Oui, il est polonais. Mais il parle anglais.”_

Enjolras’s barnacle friend joins the conversation, hanging off of Enjolras’s shoulder and looking as though he is trying his very best to bite back a laugh. _“Et toi? Tu parles anglais, Jojo?”_

Enjolras scowls, jabs an elbow into his ribs. “ _Je viens de revenir, faut que tu sois gentil.”_ He turns to Feuilly, who- who must have gotten so caught up in watching that he forgot he wasn’t supposed to be watching so very carefully. “Feuilly, Combeferre,” he points to his taller friend, who waves, “and Courfeyrac.” Courfeyrac clicks his heels and extends a hand, which Feuilly shakes.

“A pleasure, Feuilly,” he says, and he seems kind, but there’s a certain glint in his eye that tells Feuilly he’s up to something.

Feuilly clears his throat. “Likewise. I hope I’m not intruding on anything. I can-”

“Nonsense!” Courfeyrac slaps him on the shoulder. “Come inside. I bought many pastries, and Jehan made jello shots, and there are enough of both for as many extra Poles as there may be tonight.”

Feuilly shoots a glance over at Enjolras--he’s standing close to Combeferre, and Combeferre is murmuring something to him in French, and a moment later, he chuckles and nods.

“Yes,” Enjolras says, “Jehan… makes many, many jello shots. Be careful. I do not drink, and I am careful, and I… be careful.”

And that’s pretty much all the convincing Feuilly needs. He lets himself be herded into the apartment by Courfeyrac and by Enjolras’s encouraging expression, and he lets Enjolras take him by the arm and take him around to meet everyone, too. He meets Joly and Bossuet, who are squished together in the same chair and who greet him as one in nearly-good English; Marius, who is in a nice shirt and pajama pants, which Feuilly doesn’t understand, even as Enjolras is explaining (“Marius and Courf both, the apartment, they-”), until Marius gives up and explains that he and Courfeyrac are roommates and that the party is in their apartment and that somebody spilled beer on his pants; Grantaire, who pushes both a petit four and a jello shot into Feuilly’s hands and who greets him more eloquently and more drunkenly than he has ever before been greeted; Bahorel, whose English isn’t very good, but who seems very enthusiastic about speaking it anyways; Jehan, who announces that it was indeed them who had made not just some, but all of the jello shots, and who then greets Feuilly and makes the same announcement in basic Polish, which makes them both smile.

They’re nice. It’s all nice, if a bit… much, and when the party calms down a bit and Feuilly is left sitting maybe-too-close beside a tipsy and beautiful Enjolras, it’s just plain nice. “I like your friends,” he says.

Enjolras nods. “Me, too. They missed me.”

Feuilly snorts a little laugh at his confidence, but Enjolras flushes, leans over to Combeferre and whispers something. Combeferre smiles, whispers back, and Enjolras turns to face Feuilly once more, looking far too embarrassed for the situation.

“Sorry,” he says. “No, I missed them. In French, _ils m’ont manqué_ \-- they were missing of me.” Combeferre whispers something else, and Enjolras bats him away but says, “From me.”

“How long were you in Quebec?” Feuilly asks, both because he’s curious and because he’ll ask anything just to keep the conversation going, just to hear Enjolras talk again.

Enjolras lets his head flop back against the couch. “Two…” he fades off, looking to Feuilly for the missing word.

“Days?” Feuilly suggests. “Weeks?”

“Weeks. Two weeks. My sister, she has a baby last month. So I visit.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I-” He breaks off, takes out his phone, hands it to Feuilly. “Benjamin. He is very young.”

Feuilly looks down at the picture and takes a deep breath and tries to keep his smile on the sane side of the spectrum. It’s not even a good photo, not really--it’s a little blurry, and the light is too harsh, and the camera is too close and skewing everything, but in it, Enjolras is holding a tiny lump of a baby and grinning like a madman and the baby has a few wisps of his same curls and it’s pretty much the best thing he’s ever seen. “He’s great.”

Enjolras nods, but he doesn’t move to take his phone back, so Feuilly lets himself look at the picture just a little longer before handing it off. “And you?”

Feuilly frowns. “My… nephew?”

“No, your- How long were you in America?”

He takes a breath, thinks back on it. “Eight months. I was in New York for eight months.” Christ, it’s weird to say it aloud. Before then, the furthest he’d been from Warsaw was Berlin. Now, he’s back in Europe after eight months in America, eight months in New York, eight months with money.

Enjolras’s eyes widen. “Eight months?”

Feuilly huffs a laugh. “It was too long. I meant to stay for two weeks, just like you, and then the fans started really selling, and then the gallery wanted me to stay on longer, and then…”

Enjolras is looking at him blankly, fidgeting with his hands.

He sighs. “It was too long, anyways. I missed Poland.”

They sit in silence for a while after that--a few times, Enjolras does that thing he did back in the airport, where he makes as if to speak but then doesn’t, but other than that it’s nice, natural. Jehan stands up on a chair, at one point, and recites a poem in French that Feuilly doesn’t understand but Enjolras seems to appreciate.

“It’s about a soldier,” Enjolras whispers, too close to and too far from the bare skin of Feuilly’s neck. “He is dead.”

Feuilly nods. Enjolras’s lips brush against his ear from the movement.

Jehan finishes the poem, bows, nearly falls off the chair. Bahorel catches them and hauls them over his shoulder, and just like that, the still of the party is gone. Jehan is still laughing, pounding on Bahorel’s back as he makes his way over to the kitchen, and Joly says, standing up with a great cracking of joints. “It’s late. I should go home. Boss, we should go.”

And-

Oh, it _is_ late.

“Shit!” Feuilly fumbles for his phone, swears again when it doesn’t turn on. “Oh, shit, Enjolras, what time is it?”

Enjolras jerks back like some spooked animal, and it’s only then that Feuilly realizes just how close they’d gotten on the couch. “What?”

“What time is it?”

Enjolras passes Feuilly his phone, turns it on for him, and-

“Oh, _shit,”_ Feuilly hisses out, running a hand through his hair. “God, it’s after midnight, how did that even happen?”

Enjolras frowns. “There’s a problem?”

He sighs. “I didn’t… I’m an idiot. I didn’t book a hotel room before my flight, and then I got distracted, and I completely forgot. And now it’s way too late and my phone is dead and I have no idea what to do.”

Courfeyrac shoves his hands in his pockets, rocks back on his heels, and Feuilly really needs to stop getting so distracted by Enjolras, because he hadn’t even noticed him there. “AirBnB?” he suggests. “I’d offer you my guest room, but Marius sleeps there, now.”

Combeferre shakes his head. “It’s too late to book, I think.”

Feuilly groans, scrubs a hand over his face. God, he never messes up like this, never. “No, yeah, Courfeyrac might be right. That might be my best bet.”

“You can-” Enjolras cuts in, but he stops when Feuilly looks at him, turns to Combeferre. “ _Il peut rester chez moi. S’il veut.”_

Courfeyrac snorts a laugh. “He says you can stay with him, if you want to.”

The flush is back, high on Enjolras’s cheeks.

“Really?” Feuilly asks.

Enjolras nods.

He takes a deep breath, then another. Mere centimeters away, on the couch, Enjolras seems to do the same. “Okay. Okay, that’s great. Thank you.”

“Okay.” Enjolras stands. “Now?”

“Sure, okay.” He’s pretty tired, anyways. He stands, says goodbye to Enjolras’s friends, lets Jehan, who has made their way off of Bahorel’s back, give him a kiss on each cheek for the road. By the door, he waits and watches Enjolras get passed around, welcomed back home one more time.

 _“Vous avez votre valise?”_ Enjolras asks, when he, too, has made his way to the door.

Feuilly blinks. “My-”

“Your-” Enjolras mimes a rolling suitcase. “ _Valise?_ You have it?”

“Shit, yeah, let me-” he fetches it from the overstuffed coat closet Courfeyrac had stuffed it into, hours before, and rejoins Enjolras. “Thanks.” And yeah, God, he really is a bit of a mess. Give him real money and a French boy to fawn over and his twenty-six years of common sense are gone, just like that.

Enjolras is smiling, though, albeit a bit awkwardly, so it hardly matters. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

They leave. Enjolras walks at his shoulder, duffel bag slung over his back, hands in his jacket pockets. Feuilly tries his best to maintain both his dignity and the stability of his suitcase on the narrow sidewalk.

“It’s good,” Enjolras says, and it’s the first thing either of them have said since leaving the apartment. “I have a thing for your phone. For the battery.”

Feuilly laughs, a little. “Yeah, a charger is definitely the thing I’m the most grateful for, right now.”

When he looks over, Enjolras is biting back a smile, and it’s not like Feuilly has many points of comparison, here (it’s not like he has many friends), but he’s pretty certain he’s never met anyone like Enjolras before. He’s pretty sure he’s never met someone with the very same type of casual, blink-and-you-miss-it, fucking _charming,_ fucking _adorable_ sense of humor, the very same tiny, situational jokes.

He smiles back.

They take the Metro-- “It’s not long, to my apartment,” Enjolras explains, “But I am tired.” He settles on the very edge of a seat, gestures for Feuilly to sit beside him.

It’s another few minutes before either of them speak--Feuilly’s never really been much of a talker, and he’s starting to get the impression that even in French, Enjolras isn’t, either. But it is Enjolras who speaks first, yet again. “In Warsaw, is there a Metro?”

Feuilly nods. “It’s not as big as this one, though. They’re building a second line, now, but before, it just went North to South. It doesn’t go everywhere, but it’s still useful.”

“Good. Good.” Whether or not Enjolras understood, he’s nodding, and Feuilly supposes it doesn’t really matter how much he knows about the technicalities of the Warsaw Metro. “I like the Metro.”

Feuilly likes the Metro, too. (Feuilly likes Enjolras.)

They get off on the third stop. Enjolras takes Feuilly by the arm, at some point, to lead him around a bend, but he doesn’t quite let go. Feuilly doesn’t quite want him to. They walk the handful of blocks arm in arm, and it doesn’t even feel strange, doesn’t even feel like he’d only met Enjolras six hours ago.

“This is my apartment,” Enjolras murmurs, voice soft like it always seems to be, when they reach the stoop of an old, storied building. “The… We have to go by stairs.” He points to the elevator as they pass it. “It is broken.”

Feuilly only regrets that he has to carry his suitcase up to the fourth floor because it means Enjolras lets go of his arm.

“This is my apartment,” Enjolras says again, when he gets the door open, and Feuilly can’t help but look around. It’s… nice. Nothing Feuilly ever would have been able to afford, especially before New York. Old. A little cluttered--there are books, papers, newspapers, strewn across the coffee table, but Feuilly has never minded that. When Enjolras flicks the lights on, Feuilly can’t help but feel like the apartment looks wonderfully warm. He cocks his head; Feuilly follows. “My room,” he says as they pass it, setting his duffel bag just inside the door. “And-” Enjolras opens a second door. “And your room.”

The guest room is warm-looking, too, with a carefully-made bed and big windows and a bookshelf in the corner. Feuilly sets his suitcase down. “Thank you for all of this, Enjolras,” he says, and he means it. “Really, thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”

Enjolras shrugs, but he’s pink in the cheeks, and Feuilly decides that it’s a very good look for him. “If you need anything,” he says, points to his room. “I am there.” He pauses, starts again. “And the bathroom,” he says, pointing to two more doors.

“Thank you,” Feuilly says, again.

Enjolras smiles. “Goodnight, Feuilly.”

He breathes. “Goodnight, Enjolras.”

Feuilly goes to bed in Enjolras’s guest bed, and he sleeps easy, and he’s not quite sure, but he thinks that he dreams about golden hair and delicate hands and big, genuine eyes.

 

Feuilly wakes up early--thanks to that horrible café job he used to work-- but late, all the same--thanks to the jetlag. The two balance out. It’s a little after nine, when he checks his phone. The apartment is silent but lit up by the sun coming in through the slats in the shutters.

He gets dressed, makes coffee. Enjolras has one of those fancy coffee makers, the ones that make espresso with the pods, and Feuilly thinks, in a bizarre moment of sudden realization, that if his fans keep selling like they do, at the prices they’re getting, he’s probably going to have to become one of those fancy-coffee-machine people, too. He used to think he’d be using his shitty four-cup drip maker until the day he or it died.

At the very least, the espresso is good. Feuilly sits at the kitchen table, drinking it slowly and doodling little birds on the margin of the paper, left from two weeks ago. It’s nice, peaceful. He hasn’t felt peaceful enough in a long, long time.

He lets himself drift, running a finger along the rim of his mug and pondering New York, Warsaw, fans, money, Enjolras.

Enjolras, to speak of the devil, opens his door at nearly eleven, looking more asleep than otherwise--his curls falling loose from their bun, his face still marked and creased by his pillow, his pajama pants sitting low on his hips. Feuilly knows when he’s spotted, too, because Enjolras jumps, yelps, puts a hand over his heart like some Edwardian lady.

Feuilly starts, too, though not to the same extent. “Shit, sorry!” he says, though when he thinks about it, there isn’t really much to be apologizing for. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Enjolras lets out a shocked laugh, shakes his head. “No, I- I am very tired.” He shuffles into the kitchen, turns on his fancy coffee machine. “Coffee?”

Feuilly holds up his empty mug; Enjolras leans over to inspect it.

“More coffee?” he asks, when he sees.

 _More coffee_ has never been something Feuilly has ever objected to. “Sure,” he says.

Enjolras takes his cup. “Are you hungry?”

And it’s funny, because Feuilly hadn’t even been thinking about breakfast, but that’s all it takes for him to realize that yes, actually, he’s _starving._ “I could eat,” he says, but there’s a furrow in Enjolras’s brow, so he says, “Yes.”

Enjolras takes a sip of his own coffee, begins making Feuilly’s. “Me, too. I don’t have food, because of Quebec, but we can go to the boulangerie.” He hands Feuilly his coffee. “It is not far.”

Feuilly nods.

Enjolras stares at him.

He stares back.

“You’re ready?” Enjolras asks, after a moment.

He gestures to Enjolras’s pajamas. “You’re not.”

Enjolras looks down at himself, as if surprised that the universe had not simply changed him into real clothes while he drank his coffee. “I will-” He points to his room, makes his leave.

Feuilly drinks his coffee and waits. Enjolras takes a seemingly impossibly brief shower (and Feuilly very carefully does not watch him dart, towel-clad, from the washroom to his bedroom) and then emerges, fully dressed, not ten minutes later.

“I am ready,” he says, pulling his hair up into a ponytail as he walks. “And I am hungry.”

They go to the boulangerie. It’s busy, even so late in the morning, though, Feuilly supposes, probably nowhere near as busy as it would be just a handful of hours ago. He points out what he wants to Enjolras, and Enjolras orders for them both, pays for them both. And Feuilly moves to pay him back right away, riffles around in his pockets and comes up with a few Euros, but Enjolras shakes his head.

There’s something just a little too proud, something still lingering, within Feuilly, that drives a flush to the back of his neck and makes him bristle. “I can pay you back,” he says.

Enjolras takes the bag from the woman at the counter, but his eyes stay locked on Feuilly. “I-” he swallows. “You-”

Feuilly takes a breath, forces himself to remember that Enjolras doesn’t know, Enjolras doesn’t know just how poor he was just one year ago. Enjolras just wanted to pay for his fucking croissant, it didn’t mean anything at all, and certainly not pity. (He doesn’t even need pity anymore, he reminds himself, he could buy himself a croissant every single morning and go out for lunch, too, if that’s what he wanted.)

He’s still watching him. “Feuilly-”

He sighs. “It’s fine, I’m sorry. I’m a bit…” he gestures at the air around his head, and Enjolras cracks a tight little smile.

“Okay.”

There are a handful of tables set up outside, and Feuilly makes to sit down at one, but Enjolras takes him by the arm again, just like he did in the Metro.

“It is cold,” Enjolras explains. “I am cold. My apartment is not cold.”

They go back to Enjolras’s apartment. Enjolras slips his arm into the crook of Feuilly’s somewhere along the way, but when Feuilly looks over at him, he’s got his gaze fixed on the cobblestones and a pink to his cheeks.

Feuilly tugs him a little closer. Their shoulders bump up against each other as they walk. “So, you’re from Paris?” he asks, because Enjolras fits so well against it all that it would make more sense than anything else.

He shakes his head, anyways. “No. I am from the south. I go to Paris for University, and… I did not leave. I like Paris.”

It’s really, really hard not to imagine Enjolras lit up gold by provincial sun, just for a moment.

“You went to University?” Feuilly asks, once he’s (mostly) shaken the thought from his mind. “What did you study?”

“Law.” Enjolras types his building code in, opens the door for Feuilly. “I am not a lawyer, but law.”

They climb the stairs slowly, leisurely.

“Right, you’re an activist. You activate.” Not like Feuilly could have ever forgotten. Not like he’ll ever forget any of this.

Enjolras grins, anyways, then gets a little more serious, but no less brilliant. “I think… I think--” he stagnates, there on the landing, as he thinks, tries to find the words. “It is so _important,_ Feuilly, to know. To know the law. There are people who… who need help, and I don’t know how to do it if I don’t know the law. It’s important. You can see what is wrong.” He clears his throat, unlocks the door to his apartment.

Feuilly can’t breathe. Enjolras, seemingly ignorant to his sudden condition, carries on.

“I want to help. You understand?”

He nods, settles at the table, watches as Enjolras pulls two plates from his cupboard and sits down. He eats his croissant. Enjolras got some sort of pastry with apple in it; maybe Feuilly has developed some strange quirk that makes him trust Enjolras near-implicitly, but he resolves to try it, sometime.

“It’s good, no?” Enjolras asks, and Feuilly is nodding his answer before he knows what he’s talking about. Because it is good; being in Paris is good, and spending time with Enjolras is good, and New York was good but being away is good, too, and the sun shining through those big windows is good, and the sudden release of all that immeasurable _stress_ of never-having-enough is good. The croissant is good, too, though, so it doesn’t even matter.

There’s a while, there, where nobody speaks. Feuilly has spent a lot of time not speaking, in his life, and whether or not he liked that, this feels separate, different. They look up, every so often, and when they’re lucky, it’s at the same time, and they share a small smile before going back to their breakfasts.

Sometimes, Feuilly thinks he has the worst luck in the world, because, and maybe he’s being ridiculous here, he’s beginning to think he could spend a whole lot of time just like this, just sitting with Enjolras, and the layover had seemed long in the airport, but it seems like nothing, now. He’s leaving in--

(He checks the clock on the wall.)

He’s leaving in twenty-two hours.

Shit.

He looks back to Enjolras, invested in the last corner of his pastry, and realizes with a jolt that he almost certainly doesn’t even have that. Just because he’s totally fucking infatuated doesn’t mean that Enjolras means for him to stay. Just because he thinks Enjolras is the best person he’s ever met doesn’t mean that Enjolras has any sort of awareness of him, aside from at a basic stranger-I-met-at-the-airport-and-brought-to-a-party-despite-the-fact-that-we-don’t-even-speak-the-same-language level (whatever that means). He shouldn’t be daydreaming about throwing away his plane ticket, he needs to start looking for a hotel room or something.

Enjolras clears his throat, snaps him out of it and into it and everything. “Today, I need to go to- to the… to buy food. I do not have food in my apartment.”

Feuilly finds himself frowning, because he knows what Enjolras is saying, but he can’t quite parse what he means. “Sorry, you-”

“If you want-” he shrugs.

All in in a moment, Feuilly’s heart is going like a jackhammer, because he’s pretty sure Enjolras wants him to go grocery shopping with him, and that’s so stupid and domestic that he can’t help but think _maybe, maybe, maybe._ “What, you want me to go shopping with you?” he asks.

Enjolras, somehow, has missed his poorly-masked glee, because he flushes scarlet and fixes his eyes on a whorl of wood grain on the surface of the table. “I understand if… if you do not want, but I thought… I don’t know.”

Fuck shame and all that; Feuilly’s kind of done with it, if it makes Enjolras look this dejected. “I’d love to go grocery shopping with you. Let’s go. Let’s do it.”

Enjolras smiles. At this rate, Feuilly’s heart is going to give out before he even makes it to the airport.

 

They go grocery shopping. Enjolras links their arms together as they walk, and on the Metro, they stand at the same pole. The train goes around a curve in the track; their hands brush. Neither of them pull away. From there, they walk to the store.

“ _Monoprix_ ,” Feuilly reads in his very finest French accent, and Enjolras huffs a laugh.

“ _Monoprix,”_ he says, and it sounds better like that. “I do not like Monoprix, but… I like it.”

Feuilly trails after Enjolras in the store. Enjolras buys pasta and butter and eggs and milk and tomatoes and lunch meat and cereal and chives and… and Feuilly kind of stops trying to find a pattern after that, and he just watches.

“For dinner,” Enjolras says, as he carefully examines the apples. “What do you like?”

And, okay, if Feuilly finds himself smiling into the collar of his jacket before he turns around, that’s his business. “Anything. Anything you want to make,” he says, and maybe that sounded a little too genuine, but at this point, he’s pretty sure Enjolras doesn’t mind.

Enjolras hums under his breath, picks out a few apples that he’s deemed adequate. “My cooking is not very very good, Feuilly,” he warns. “It will not be escargots.”

That’s fine for a couple of reasons. “That’s just fine, Enj, I promise,” he says, and the nickname just slipped out, honestly, but-- he looks, checks-- Enjolras doesn’t seem to mind that, either.

He frowns down at the apples in his hands, just for a moment. “ _Des pâtes_ ?” he asks, when the English doesn’t seem to come to him. He grabs the pasta from the cart, shakes it a little. “ _Des pâtes?”_ he says again.

“Des pâtes,” Feuilly echoes. “That sounds great.”

Enjolras is smiling again.

They do another lap of the store, and Enjolras grabs more tomatoes and creme and everything else. He holds up a pack of sausage, tugs at the sleeve of Feuilly’s jacket. “Do you eat?” he asks.

He nods. The sausage goes in the cart. As does a candy bar, on the way up to checkout, and when they leave, he splits it and hands Feuilly half.

(Damn his stupid, fluttering heart.)

They drop the groceries back at Enjolras’s apartment. Feuilly watches Enjolras put them away and he watches the clock on the wall, and the clock very stubbornly refuses to stop but Enjolras finishes, turns around, says, “Lunch?”

And Feuilly isn’t super hungry, he could wait, but what he can’t do is refuse Enjolras anything. “Sure.”

“What do you like?”

“Anything.”

They walk to a little Vietnamese place and Feuilly can’t help but think that it is very, very easy and very, very nice to follow Enjolras around all day.

“I like this restaurant,” Enjolras murmurs--their arms are linked, again, so he can, even on the sort-of-busy street. “I am here often. Very often.”

Feuilly can’t stop looking at the way the light glints off his curls. “Oh, yeah?”

He nods. “I do not cook enough, Combeferre says. He says I am _gâté_.”

“Gâté?”

Enjolras shrugs. “I eat often at restaurants.”

They both get phở--Enjolras gets chicken, Feuilly gets beef. And they eat in silence, companionable silence, until Enjolras asks, between bites of soup, “Did you go to University?”

If Feuilly were a little less distracted, he could have probably made up some diplomatic excuse. As it is, he freezes, finds himself staring down into his bowl. Which is ridiculous, it’s only University, only it’s not, because it’s-

“No,” he says, watching a leaf of cilantro drift. “I- I couldn’t.” He glances up; Enjolras is watching him with his big, beautiful, serious eyes. He sighs. “I wanted to, but before New York, I was- I was really, really poor. The fans selling like they are, that’s all a new thing. So… yeah. I didn’t have the money for University, and I had to work, anyways.” Enjolras is still watching. “But I guess it worked out, eventually, so…” He fades off, goes back to his soup.

It’s strange--for a moment, he could have sworn Enjolras was about to reach out and take his hand over the table.

He doesn’t, though.

“Feuilly,” Enjolras says, instead. “Feuilly, I-” there’s a look of utter frustration on Enjolras’s face as he fumbles the words. “Feuilly, you are- you are so good. Your art, and you- you-” he breaks off, huffs. “I can’t say anything.”

He doesn’t really mind. (That’s a lie--he’d give just about anything, right now, to be able to talk, really talk, to Enjolras.) He shrugs. “It’s fine.”

“Feuilly,” Enjolras just says, again.

Feuilly lets the tips of his fingers brush out, settle just barely against the back of Enjolras’s hand.

Enjolras doesn’t move.

After they finish their lunch--and it takes the larger part of two hours, just like that-- and after Enjolras lets him pay (“Only because I cook dinner”), and after they start walking, arms linked like before, they take a different turn, and then another, and then another, from before.

Feuilly jostles Enjolras a little, but only because it means their shoulders press together a little closer, after. “Where are you taking me?”

There’s a moment, just then, when Enjolras tips his head, rests it against Feuilly’s shoulder as they walk. “ _Les passages couverts.”_

And Feuilly doesn’t understand, of course he doesn’t, but that doesn’t matter, because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter where Enjolras takes him, except for the fact that it’s Enjolras who brought him there, and-

They turn into an alley, through a gate, and then-

_Oh._

When he tears his eyes away from it all--away from the high, glass ceilings, the tiled floors, the shops, the lamps, glowing gold and stunning, Enjolras is watching him, grinning. “Yes?” he asks, drumming his fingers on Feuilly’s arm.

Feuilly nods, speechless. “This is-”

“You like art,” Enjolras explains, as they start walking once more, and he gestures vaguely at everything in sight. “And I think… This is art, and it is my favorite. So…”

“This is incredible, Enjolras,” he finds himself whispering.

Enjolras smiles, if possibly, a little wider.

They walk slow, arm in arm. One of Enjolras’s curls slips loose, tickles Feuilly’s neck. Feuilly tucks it back, unthinking, and Enjolras lets him, flushes pink, in the meantime.

They keep walking. Every so often, Enjolras will tug at Feuilly’s arm, point something out--sometimes, with accompanying comment, sometimes without. Feuilly is pretty sure that he has never in his life felt so very warm inside.

The passage comes to a turn, and Enjolras, beautiful Enjolras, wonderful Enjolras, tilts his face up and presses a kiss, impossibly soft, right to the corner Feuilly’s jaw.

Feuilly tries not to struggle for breath too obviously, but it’s hard. When he lets himself disentangle his arm from Enjolras’s own to slip it around his waist, instead, he isn’t sure if it gets easier or even worse.

They go back to Enjolras’s apartment, just like that--Feuilly’s arm around Enjolras’s waist, Enjolras’s head on Feuilly’s shoulder. The both of them quiet, up until Enjolras, at the door, says. “There is work that I have to do. A little.”

Feuilly grabs his sketchbook from his bag. They sit together on the couch--not as close as before, but companionable. Natural. Enjolras types at his laptop, leaning against the armrest and all curled up, and Feuilly doesn’t even try to stop himself from sketching him. He even bothers to grab his nice pencils, a real eraser. So, okay, maybe he’s a little shameless. So what?

He draws Enjolras, and it’s like… it’s like touching him, almost. It’s going over each and every one of his features, and it’s good that he is, a secret little part in the back of Feuilly’s mind tells him, because maybe this way, he won’t forget. He won’t forget the crease between Enjolras’s brows, or the curve of his lips, or the way the light plays off his cheek, or the way his curls frame his face like a halo, or the exact angle of the tip of his nose.

He could draw Enjolras for hours. For days. For weeks.

When he looks back up from his drawing, Enjolras is looking back at him. “Are you-” he asks, and he can’t seem to find the words to finish the question, but Feuilly doesn’t need him to.

He turns his sketchbook, lets him look.

And he does look. Enjolras shifts his laptop onto the coffee table, scoots closer, takes the drawing in hand.

“What do you think?” Feuilly asks, and when Enjolras doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look up, he makes himself continue. “It’s just a rough sketch, I still need to fix the hair, but it’s-”

“Can I have it?” Enjolras cuts him off, looks up at him. He’s blushing, flushed bright pink, but his jaw is set.

“I-” Feuilly grasps at his thoughts, because this _matters,_ this is all he’ll have as proof, as memory, once he goes back to Poland, he can’t just hand it over because Enjolras is looking at him like he’s never been looked at before. “What?”

“Can I have it?” Enjolras asks again. His fingers are clenched tight over the edge of the book. Feuilly is pretty sure some of the pages are crumpling at the edge, but it doesn’t matter. It’s good, probably. “It is so beautiful, and it… and you did it, and-”

Feuilly is on his feet in an instant, because it’s obvious now, isn’t it. “I can’t give you that,” he manages, “But- just wait a minute, wait.” And then he’s darting to his room, and digging through his suitcase for the padded cardboard box he put right in the center on purpose, because it’s fragile, and it needed the security of the clothes around it, back when he packed it in his apartment in New York. But now he’s tearing the box open, pulling the fan from it with trembling hands, opening it gingerly.

Maybe he’s crazy, he thinks distantly. It’s a beautiful fan--he’d spent the whole eight months in New York making it, carving it, painting it, and he’s never made anything so exquisite before in his life, and it’s his best, even by his own admission. He can’t even think about how much it would have sold for.

God, his agent is going to _murder_ him when he finds out.

Whatever.

He stumbles from the room, rejoins Enjolras at the couch, holds the fan out like he’ll die if Enjolras doesn’t take it, and then he thinks, for the strangest moment, that maybe he will. “I’ll trade you.”

Enjolras is staring at him, eyes impossibly wide. “I think-” he clears his throat. “I think I don’t understand.”

“Take it,” Feuilly says, and he reaches for the sketchbook with the other hand. “I just need- I need the drawing.”

And in an instant, Enjolras looks horrified. “I did not mean-” He all but shoves the sketchbook at Feuilly, shakes his head. “I would not- If you don’t want, I will not- You do not need to give me your-” he points at the fan.

It’s not about the drawing anymore, though, and Feuilly blindly sets the sketchbook down on the coffee table behind him. “Enjolras, take it, please,” he says. “I want you to have it,” he says, and it’s heartbreakingly true. He just wants-

He just wants to leave something here.

He just wants Enjolras to think of him like he looked at the fans that first time he saw them, in pictures on his phone in the airport.

And Enjolras takes a deep, shuddering breath, reaches out, and takes the fan.

Feuilly breathes a sigh of relief and collapses down on the couch, far closer than before. He watches as Enjolras opens the fan, slow and ginger in it all, rib by rib, and he watches the way his gaze is locked, wonder-filled and wonderful.

“Feuilly,” Enjolras murmurs, when the fan is open, when it’s all on display. And then he looks up, right at Feuilly, and reaches out a hand to hold tight to his shoulder and says, so genuine it hurts, “ _Thank_ you.”

And he starts to say, “It’s nothing, really, I-” but he stops, or, he’s stopped, because Enjolras has leaned in and kissed him.

It’s not a particularly… _salacious_ kiss, but it’s solid and warm and definite and Feuilly has to snap himself out of his thoughts because they’re spinning like crazy in his head and Enjolras is still kissing him but he’s starting to pull away and Feuilly doesn’t want him to so he kisses back.

The noise Enjolras makes-- soft, low, breathy-- is wonderful and intoxicating and encouraging and Feuilly’s pretty sure it’s lodged itself in his brain forever. Feuilly presses forward, lets one of his hands weave its way into Enjolras’s golden curls, lets the other settle on his waist, and Enjolras melts into him and kisses back and-

And stiffens, pulls back, leaves Feuilly aching. “Wh-” Feuilly starts, desperately scrounging for any dignity he can find.

But Enjolras just smiles, all breathless and kissed, and waves the fan, still in hand. “Be careful,” he says, and Feuilly lets out a hysterical laugh, goes in for another kiss.

Enjolras shakes his head. “Be _careful,”_ he says again, and he stands, makes his way to his bookcase, opens it, sets the fan inside with more care than Feuilly figures anything on this Earth could ever possibly warrant. And then he’s back at the couch, with his slight little smile. “Okay, it is good,” he says, and he’s looking at Feuilly expectantly, so Feuilly does what any rational human being would do and he leans in and kisses him and presses him down against the couch from the force of it.

Enjolras sounds hopelessly pleased.

Feuilly groans against his lips. Because God, this is fucking ridiculous, this whole situation is fucking ridiculous, but Enjolras is the best thing in the world, he’s pretty sure, and he’s fucking _stunning,_ and he’s fucking _wonderful,_ and he’s _kissing Feuilly,_ and he doesn’t even speak Polish, or English, but Feuilly still wants everything to do with him, forever.

And there’s something about the way Enjolras fits beneath him, too, and the way he’s squirming with the kiss like he can’t get enough, and the way he’s scrawny as anything but still strong when he touches Feuilly, when he grabs him, and it’s all driving Feuilly crazy.

“You’re driving me crazy,” Feuilly murmurs, letting his mouth slip from Enjolras’s lips to Enjolras’s jawline. “I shouldn’t like you anywhere near as much as I do. It’s ridiculous, I’m leaving tomorrow morning, I only met you yesterday, you’re driving me crazy.”

Enjolras’s hand makes its way into Feuilly’s hair. “I do not-” he takes a breath. “I do not understand you.”

Feuilly kisses lower down Enjolras’s neck; bites, a little. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Mm.”

Feuilly bites him again, and he can’t help but want to leave a mark. Enjolras moans. “Good?” he asks.

He can feel Enjolras beginning to get hard against his thigh. “Good,” Enjolras chokes out. He reaches down, frames Feuilly’s face with his hands, looks at him so intently Feuilly feels a little bit like he’s being, like, fucking x-rayed or something.

“Enj?”

“Kiss me?” Enjolras says, and so Feuilly does. He kisses him deep, and thorough, and Enjolras kisses him back like it’s all that matters. And then Enjolras pulls back, slow and gentle, but he stays close when he says, “Wait.”

Feuilly pulls back, too, takes a moment to look Enjolras over. He’s flushed, rumpled, well-kissed, beautiful. He has a hickey on the side of his neck, just out of the shadow of his jaw; Feuilly reaches out to touch it. “Huh?” he says, eloquent as always.

Enjolras breathes, shuts his eyes for a moment. “Dinner,” he says. “I need to make dinner. We can’t, now, I… Later.”

“Okay,” Feuilly says. “Okay.”

And so Enjolras stands, and brushes his fingers along the line of Feuilly’s jaw as he does, and goes to the kitchen. Feuilly trails after him.

Things go back to normal as Enjolras cooks--or, at the very least, they do just enough for Feuilly to stop going absolutely crazy every time Enjolras looks at him. Enjolras puts him to work slicing tomatoes and onions as he gets everything out, and when Feuilly hands him the cutting board, he beams, like Feuilly invented tomatoes, instead of merely dicing them into manageable pieces.

Enjolras talks to himself under his breath as he cooks, all in French and all soft and casual. Narration, probably; Feuilly catches snippets he thinks he understands-- _tomates_ and _pâtes_ and _sauce_ and _cuisiner_. At one point, he brushes the saucepan with the back of his hand, just for a second, and hisses something, sharp and soft.

God, he’s lovely.

Feuilly gets a colander shoved into his hands as Enjolras bustles by to grab plates and cups and forks and glasses. So he strains the pasta, but he gets a little distracted midway through, because Enjolras is setting it all out like some fancy restaurant, complete with cloth napkins and a tablecloth and a bottle of wine. And part of him feels like it should say that it isn’t necessary, he doesn’t need to do all that just for Feuilly, but he doesn’t… he doesn’t _want_ to. What he wants to do is add the sauce to the pasta and bring it to the table and sit down across from Enjolras, so he does.

Enjolras beams. “ _Bon appetit.”_

Feuilly chuckles, takes a bite, moans a little. “Enjolras, this is delicious.”

“Thank you,” he says. “Do you want-” He picks up the wine, offers it across the table.

And Feuilly takes it, pours himself half a glass and then one for Enjolras, but only because he promises himself that that’s it, because he can’t… He needs to remember this, whatever happens. Enjolras seems to be of a similar mind, because when he finishes his glass, he makes no move to pour himself another.

“Are you happy to go home to Warsaw?” Enjolras asks, when he’s set his fork down.

Feuilly opens his mouth to answer, then freezes-- because a little over a day ago, that would be an easy _yes._ A little over a day ago, he’d been so sick of New York and America and having to speak English and not knowing how long he’d have to stay in his apartment and being so far from everything he grew up knowing. But… but he’s not so sure anymore. Now, looking at it all, Poland doesn’t seem quite so tempting anymore. It seems _lonely_. “I don’t know,” he settles on. He clears his throat. “But I guess it doesn’t really matter how I feel about it.

Enjolras nods slowly. “I thought-”

“I don’t really know anyone,” he admits, so suddenly it takes him by surprise. “In Warsaw. I don’t know anyone. In New York I had some artist friends, and in Paris I-” he swallows, continues. “I love Warsaw, but I’m lonely, there.”

“Your family?” Enjolras asks.

“No, I don’t-” this is easier to say, somehow. “I don’t actually have any family. I grew up in an orphanage.”

Enjolras is staring at him so, so intently.

He shrugs. “Sorry. It’s a little depressing.”

“I like knowing things. I like knowing you.”

Feuilly clears his throat again. God, sometimes Enjolras says shit that just makes his heart flutter. “So, you’re writing an article?”

“Yes.” Enjolras sits forward in his chair, leans in a little. “It is… _Les banlieues,_ you know?”

Feuilly shakes his head, but oh, if only he did, if only he understood.

He takes his empty plate, moves it closer to Feuilly. “This is Paris,” he says, tapping at the porcelain with his finger. “Yes?”

“Okay.”

He moves his hands off the edge of the plate, traces a circle around it. “ _Les banlieues_ ,” he says. “There is a problem. And the police, they are… they are dangerous. To the people. And the people do not have their rights. And there is no-- no…” he fades off, sits back in his chair. “I don’t know how to say it.”

Maybe Feuilly will learn French, one day, just to read that article.

He doesn’t say that to Enjolras, of course, because that’s far too much, but he thinks it.

Enjolras shrugs. “You are finished? Your dinner?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He stands. “It was delicious, Enjolras, thank you.” He goes to bring his plate to the sink, and wash it, and when he turns around after, Enjolras is behind him, just a little too close for it to mean nothing. “Enj?” he asks.

“I think- I thought…” he swallows. “Can I kiss you?”

Feuilly doesn’t bother with answering, he just leans in and does it.

And oh, it’s just as wonderful as last time, just as wonderful as he imagined. Feuilly can’t help but to shuffle forward to press Enjolras up against the fridge, can’t help but to kiss him with everything he’s got, and Enjolras _whines,_ wraps his arms around Feuilly and holds him tight.

Feuilly wants to kiss the absolute everything out of Enjolras. He finds his way back to Enjolras’s neck, kissing messy and bruising, and when he slips a hand up and underneath his shirt, Enjolras just… _moans,_ blatant and shameless and unrepentant.

“What do you want?” Feuilly asks, mouth still against soft, soft skin, instead of convincing his thigh between Enjolras’s legs like he wants to.

Enjolras chokes out a little noise, presses up against Feuilly, doesn’t answer.

Feuilly makes himself stop, but he can’t pull away, he can’t. “What do- what do you _want?_ ” he asks, again.

He twists his fingers in Feuilly’s hair, says, “Yes,” but he still won’t answer.

So Feuilly pulls away, just enough, reaches out to tuck Enjolras’s hair out of his face. “Enjolras, come on, what do you want?”

And Enjolras says, voice low and desperate, “ _You,”_ and that’s enough for Feuilly.

He takes him by the hand, tugs him across the apartment (nearly trips over a chair), watches as Enjolras opens his bedroom door, and from there, it’s Enjolras leading him, pulling him onto the bed, straddling his lap, kissing him. Enjolras, taking off his own shirt, then tugging at Feuilly’s. Enjolras, golden, golden.

“You’re really fucking beautiful,” Feuilly breathes against Enjolras’s collarbone.

Enjolras whimpers, grinds up against him. “Please,” he says, and Feuilly already knows he can’t say no to anything, doesn’t want to say no to anything.

He shifts Enjolras off his lap, tries to ignore his sound of protest, guides him to lie down atop the comforter. And he runs his hands over the planes of Enjolras’s stomach, breathes deep, and pops the button on Enjolras’s jeans.

Enjolras muffles a moan against the meat of his arm.

Feuilly doesn’t really want to take his time anymore, so he just shucks Enjolras’s pants off and throws them somewhere where they’re not in the way.

He goes down, takes Enjolras into his mouth. And the sound, the fucking _sound_ Enjolras makes, is enough to get him grinding against the bed as he blows him, just like that, in his pants.

Enjolras has got a hand in Feuilly’s hair, gripping tight, and he’s… he’s _talking,_ just on and on, a soft and steady river of French. Feuilly hears his name a lot.

He takes more of Enjolras into his mouth, relishes in the stifle of it all, lets himself hold too tight, just in the hopes that maybe, maybe in two days, three days, Enjolras will have bruises on his thighs that make it just a little harder for him to forget.

Enjolras tugs even harder on his hair, and he looks up (and realizes he’d let his eyes slip closed, and opens them again) to see him breathless and desperate and wild beneath him. “Feuilly,” he gasps, the word breaking in the middle, and it’s pretty much the best thing he’s ever heard.

Feuilly’s going to be jerking off to this for a really, really, _really_ long time.

He switches the rhythm, adds a twist of the wrist and a little extra time on the head of his cock, and Enjolras says, once more, “ _Feuilly,”_ he gasps it, and then he’s coming.

When it’s over, Enjolras lies lax and loose beneath him, and Feuilly takes a moment to simply breathe, his forehead pressed up against the sharp jut of Enjolras’s hip. He hasn’t come yet, but there’s something to be said for simply listening to Enjolras breathe, simply feeling warm skin under his hands, simply touching.

He’s not sure how long he lingers there, just shifting against the blanket, before Enjolras pulls him back up, kisses him again. And now Feuilly is the one who’s desperate, Feuilly is the one being driven mad by Enjolras’s every touch, and Feuilly is the one who can’t stop himself from moaning when Enjolras takes his hand and guides it back, back around, back around to his ass, and says, “Do you want?”

And Feuilly absolutely fucking does, but he’s pretty sure he’s going to come in about five seconds, so he just takes Enjolras’s other hand--delicate, beautiful-- and pulls it to the front of his pants and says, gasps, “ _Please.”_

So Enjolras undoes his pants, and shoves them down, and Feuilly kicks them the rest of the way off, and Enjolras takes him in hand, and oh, oh God, it’s- it’s… it’s monumental, that’s what it is, it’s extraordinary, it’s the best thing he’s ever felt, because Enjolras is still kissing him, tender and all, and he’s jerking him off steady and calculated and firm, and it’s _Enjolras,_ and it’s too much.

Feuilly comes.

Enjolras looks surprised, almost, but Feuilly can’t do anything but lie, motionless, against Enjolras. He doesn’t _want_ to do anything but that. He feels Enjolras press a kiss to the top of his head, and he lets his eyes fall shut, just for a moment.

 

Feuilly wakes to bright, bright sunlight shining in the window and Enjolras warm and still asleep beneath him and everything else just a little too cold. It takes him a minute to parse it all--Enjolras beneath him is, after all, very distracting, but when he does, he jolts upright, heart pounding.

Enjolras, beside him, now, groans and throws an arm over his eyes. “ _Mais c’est quoi?”_ he mumbles, leaning back into Feuilly.

Feuilly, much as he is loathe to do so, shakes him awake. “Enj, what time is it?”

He groans again.

“Enjolras, wake up, come on, what time is it?”

Enjolras fumbles blindly for the alarm clock on the nightstand, turns it to face Feuilly, and Feuilly squints at it, and-

“Oh, shit!” He stumbles out of the bed. “Oh, Enjolras, I am running so late.”

That’s got Enjolras sitting up, rubbing at his eyes, and oh, Feuilly wishes he had a moment to linger. (Ideally, he’d have a lot longer than that, too.) “Late?”

“So, so late.”

Enjolras scrubs a hand over his face. “I will… I will make coffee, you will prepare.”

And Feuilly should probably say something like _No, go back to sleep, I don’t want to trouble you, you don’t need to come,_ but…

But he doesn’t want to, so he takes the shortest shower of his life, and he gets dressed in something that’s hopefully decent, and he walks back out to find Enjolras, dressed in yesterday’s jeans and a hoodie, sitting at the table with two cups of his fancy coffee and some toast.

“Eat something,” he says.

Feuilly is suddenly filled to the brim with so much fucking affection he feels like he’s going to burst or cry or laugh or something. “Okay,” he says, instead, and when he sits down at the table, Enjolras kisses him. Just a short kiss, a peck, really.

“Eat,” he says, again.

Feuilly eats.

“Can I go to the airport, too?” Enjolras asks.

Feuilly nods. “Of course.”

“Good.”

Breakfast is short, too short, but still too long for scheduling purposes. After, Feuilly goes to brush his teeth and frantically stuff his toiletries into his bag and grab his suitcase, and when he meets Enjolras at the door, he’s handed a carefully folded piece of paper.

“My number,” Enjolras explains. “If you want.”

Feuilly tucks it into the inside pocket of his jacket, gives it a pat. “Thank you,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like enough, but Enjolras seems to understand.

They walk to the metro, arm in arm, just like they did the day before, though their pace is, admittedly, much brisker. And then they make one rushed line transfer, the two of them all but running through the passages, then another, and then Enjolras seems content with their situation and simply slumps against Feuilly’s side in their seats.

“I am tired,” he explains, as though Feuilly didn’t know. “Quebec is… The time is different in Quebec.” He pauses, thinks. “And I am cold.”

Feuilly can only really fix one of those things, but at least he can do that. He dislodges Enjolras, just for a moment, just to slip his jacket off, then pulls it over Enjolras’s shoulders and tugs him back against him. “Just relax. Last stop, right?”

He nods. “ _Charles de Gaulle,”_ he murmurs. And then he’s quiet, but not for very long, because at the next stop, he sighs, tightens his hold on Feuilly’s arm, and says, “I will miss you.”

Feuilly looks over at him, and it’s not that he’s surprised, it’s just that…

Yeah, okay, he’s a little surprised, but only because this situation is all so unpredictable that none of it makes sense, none of it at all.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Enjolras very resolutely keeps his gaze on Feuilly’s suitcase, between the two of their legs. “I- I like you. A lot.”

Feuilly takes a deep breath, presses a kiss to the side of Enjolras’s head, lets it linger. “I like you, too. A lot.” He pulls Enjolras, if possible, closer. “It’ll work out,” he says, and it suddenly feels true. He has Enjolras’s number. Enjolras likes him. It’ll be fine. “We’ll work it out.”

“Okay.” Enjolras’s voice is impossibly soft, but at least it’s something. “Okay.”

 _“Charles de Gaulle,”_ blares the loudspeaker, all of a sudden, and the moment is pretty much broken. “ _Charles de Gaulle,”_ it says again.

Feuilly stands, grabs his suitcase, takes Enjolras’s hand. Enjolras leads him off the train, through the station, to the bag check. The room, too large around them, is bustling, packed, but Enjolras tugs him to some corner, by a sign, and kisses him.

They keep it brief--it’s a public place, and Feuilly’s never really been one for huge, public displays of affection, but it’s sweet, and soft, and when Enjolras pulls away, his eyes look a little watery. Feuilly can relate.

“I’m going to miss you,” Feuilly says, because he figures it’s his turn. “I’m really, really going to miss you.”

And in an instant, Enjolras is in his arms, holding tight, shaking a little. “Your flight,” he says, against Feuilly’s chest, but he doesn’t quite let go.

Feuilly does his best to commit the way Enjolras feels against him to memory.

Enjolras pulls away before he feels he fully can, but, then again, it’s probably more than impossible to keep it all. “Your flight,” he says again.

Feuilly nods. “Yeah.” He sighs, cracks a smile, tries not to let out a sob. “Bye, Enjolras.” Their hands are still touching.

“Goodbye, Feuilly,” Enjolras says, and then Feuilly is walking through the airport alone, and it’s over.

It isn’t until he’s all the way through security that he realizes he never took his jacket, never took the number in the pocket, back from Enjolras.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras can't speak English it's canon pass it on idc what Victor Hugo told you


	2. Eight Hours

So, okay, maybe Feuilly’s decision to sign that long-time contract with that gallery in Paris wasn’t completely unbiased. And, okay, maybe he did find himself looking around just a little too carefully when he flew into Charles de Gaulle, just on the off-chance, the impossibility, that maybe, maybe, maybe. And, okay, maybe he did spend the last four years paying a tutor to teach him French, just in case. 

Whatever.

And, okay, sure, maybe Feuilly still hasn’t gotten over those however-many hours he spent with Enjolras, all those years back. Maybe he still isn’t over how- how  _ close  _ he was, to having a real chance, how Enjolras had pressed his number into his hand like all that mattered was that he had and and how somehow, he  _ still  _ fucked it up. And maybe he still draws Enjolras, sometimes, and maybe he kept that portrait he drew all those years back up on his wall and now that he’s moving, maybe he’s got it tucked away, so carefully, between two blank pages and against a sheet of wax paper in a hardcover sketchbook, just so it doesn’t get crumpled, just so he can put it up on his wall in Paris, too.

Again, whatever.

So maybe the decision wasn’t totally uninfluenced by all that, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good decision. That doesn’t mean that when Feuilly stops by the gallery on the way back from the airport he isn’t completely gobsmacked, breathless, standing in the middle of the floor.

His agent had sent the fans weeks and weeks ago--he’d kind of missed them. 

But the gallery, God, the gallery--it’s fucking gorgeous. Part of him still thinks it’s crazy that he even gets to be here at all. Part of him just wants to, like, jump up and down and yell something loud enough for the passers-by to hear. 

Part of him wants to kick his past self for deciding that yeah, sure, flying in the day of the gallery opening would be totally fine, because he really wants to stay here and take it all in, but he also needs to be at his new apartment in exactly twenty minutes to sign for the shipment from the moving company, and he doesn’t technically know where said apartment even is. 

He says a hasty goodbye to the organizers bustling about and takes off at a very, very brisk walk. He’s not really so lost as it seems--he knows the metro station he needs to get off at, and his phone directs him from there, but then he turns a corner, and he finds himself face-to-face with a very, very familiar Vietnamese restaurant, and he can’t really breathe, all of a sudden.

Because it had seemed so distant, before--yes, everything had still… happened, but even back in Paris, everything seemed a little bit hypothetical. Now…

Enjolras was  _ there.  _ He and Enjolras were there together, and they both got phở, and then they’d gone to the  _ passages couvertes  _ and Enjolras had kissed him, just on the jaw. And now… 

Feuilly can’t decide if he desperately wants to get lunch there tomorrow, or if doing so would make him do something stupid like break down and cry, just like he did on that flight back to Warsaw. He settles for taking a deep breath and keeping walking, eyes to the cobblestones, because if he looks up now, so close to Enjolras’s apartment, he’ll either remember something, or he won’t, and both of those sound like horrible, painful options.

He makes it to the apartment. The movers are already there, but just barely, so Feuilly apologizes and unlocks the door for them and watches them bring everything up to the third floor, and then he signs the bill and closes the door and sits down in his empty-save-for-boxes-upon-boxes-upon-boxes-and-a-few-bits-of-furniture-he-liked-enough-to-bring apartment and looks about himself with wonder. 

It’s an old apartment  _ (just like Enjolras’s _ , his horrible, no-good mind provides), the kind he’d been so sure he’d never own, and it’s beautiful, and it’s fairly large, and more importantly, it’s  _ his.  _ Wow. 

He orders Indian and eats it on his balcony with the plastic utensils that come in the bag, because his forks are buried at the bottom of a box somewhere, and he thinks to himself that this is a good thing. It’s all good.

Feuilly unpacks a few critical things--blankets, toiletries, dishes, drawing supplies, computer, (drawing of Enjolras that he finds the frame for and puts in the living room)-- then goes and gets changed out of his schlubby plane clothes and into his suit, because his agent had been very firm on this being a formal event, and apparently, none of his regular clothes made the cut. At the very least, he got himself out of having to wear a tie. 

When he catches a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror, he has to take a moment, just to pause, just to look himself over, because he’s pretty sure that this suit cost more than a month’s rent did, back in his old Warsaw apartment, back before New York, back before Enjolras. It’s weird. He can’t say he hates it.

He takes the metro back to the gallery, and he walks slower than he should to the metro, thinking about the streets around him--four years ago, he’d probably be able to find Enjolras’s apartment just off memory and determination. Now, he doesn’t dare try, because it would be ridiculous, and Paris is enormous, and he can’t just show up to someone’s apartment, and also because if he couldn’t find it, he doesn’t know what he’d do with himself.

But the gallery is bustling, now, with caterers and managers and interns, and he gets dragged off by someone he assumes is in charge as soon as he arrives and quickly informed about schedules and bidders and important guests and reviewers and hors d'oeuvres. An intern, or perhaps a very young… something else, fixes his collar, then rushes off. It’s all a little overwhelming. 

He nabs a crostini off a tray that’s resting on an end table, eats it off in a corner. It’s good.

When the gallery opens to the public, it’s worse. He’s pulled into conversation after conversation, interview after interview, passed around like a chew-toy, or a blunt, or, like, an interesting but rare book. He talks about the fans, and the drawings he’s got scattered throughout, and Warsaw-New York-Paris, and artistry, and what it was like to grow up without a family (which was awkward) and if he has any inspirations, and all that. He answers as best he can, tries to remember his French grammar, and is seriously considering slipping away to the bathroom, just to get a moment alone, when he spots a strangely familiar profile from across the room. 

It takes a while to place it, and Feuilly just stares, for a moment--perhaps an old classmate, perhaps an artist he met in New York, perhaps someone he saw in the airport, perhaps-

He looks closer, takes in the dark curls, the crooked nose, the pockmarked skin, the smirk, and-

That’s Grantaire. That’s Grantaire, Enjolras’s friend, who gave him a jello shot at a party four years ago. That’s Enjolras’s friend, here, at Feuilly’s gallery opening. 

He’s across the room in an instant, before Grantaire can slip away. Grantaire is in conversation with someone who looks like a journalist, but Feuilly can’t be bothered, he just chokes out, “Grantaire.”

Grantaire turns, and the smirk has grown. “Feuilly,” he says. “Funny seeing you here.”

Feuilly is pretty sure he’s still staring. “This is my gallery opening.”

He huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I know. Hard to miss.”

Okay, so now Feuilly feels a little stupid for falling for that. But it doesn’t matter, because there’s more important things to handle right now, and seriously, if he messes this up again he doesn’t know what he’ll do. “Listen, Grantaire, um…”

“Enjolras?”

He clears his throat. “Yeah, Enjolras, do you- do you have his number, or anything? Or… I don’t know if… I left him my jacket, he had his number in my jacket, I didn’t mean to- Are you still friends? Do you know-” he fades off, suddenly aware of the way Grantaire is biting back an indecipherable smile. “Yeah. Enjolras.”

Grantaire just raises his eyebrows over Feuilly’s shoulder, and for a split second, he’s fucking elated, full of blind faith, but when he turns, it’s just a fifty-something woman with a string of pearls worth more than Feuilly’s whole person, looking to chat.

When Feuilly glances back over at Grantaire, a very effective (in his opinion) look of utter betrayal on his face, Grantaire is looking at his phone, not even appreciating it. He finishes the conversation; when he looks over a second time, Grantaire is gone.

_ Fuck.  _

He’s a professional, though (never mind the fact that if he runs into Grantaire again, he’ll kick his ass), so he keeps chatting, keeps mingling, keeps eating those crostini, keeps feeling just a little miserable. 

And then he spots familiar blond curls, just out of the corner of his eye, and he feels like his heart has simply stopped beating in his chest. 

He dares to look, never mind the fact that he can’t breathe.

Enjolras is there, just there, bent close to one of the fans near the entrance and examining it with utter confusion. 

Feuilly has to shake his head to make sure he’s not dreaming, or hallucinating, or  _ something.  _ He’s not.

He may or may not walk away from a conversation with a promising bidder right then and there. He walks slow--any faster, and he’s sure Enjolras will spook, or simply disappear, but then he’s there, right behind Enjolras, within reach.

He lets his fingertips brush Enjolras’s shoulder, and Enjolras wheels around, ready to chew someone out, or something, and he just-

Stops.

Enjolras is frozen, completely frozen, staring at Feuilly with his mouth half open and his eyes wide.

Feuilly’s stuck looking at him, too, and the way he’s pretty sure the line between his brows has gotten a little more pronounced, and the way his hair is cut just a little shorter, and the way he has a tiny, clear band-aid on the edge of his cheek, where he must have nicked himself shaving. God, he looks even better than he remembered.

“Hey, Enj,” he chokes out, because one of them needs to say something.

“Feuilly,” Enjolras breathes, and Feuilly needs to explain, and he’s pretty sure he starts to, but then he’s being pulled into an embrace so tight he can’t think about anything but Enjolras and Enjolras and Enjolras.

“I didn’t mean to,” Feuilly finds himself murmuring, up against Enjolras’s neck. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t realize I didn’t- I left you with my jacket, your number was in the pocket, but I forgot, I didn’t even realize until I was through security, I meant to keep it, I meant to call, I-”

“I know,” Enjolras says, and Feuilly lets out a breath. “I found the number in your pocket on the ride back.”

Feuilly just buries his face in his neck and holds him tighter. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he runs Enjolras’s words through his mind, trying to figure out why he sounds different, and how. 

Enjolras shakes his head, takes a breath--Feuilly can feel it, against his own chest. “So, this is your gallery?” he asks, and Feuilly has it, he’s found the difference, and it’s blatantly, glaringly obvious, now. 

“You learned English,” he says, instead of answering, because this is more important than some fucking gallery. 

He flushes pink, and Christ, Feuilly missed him. “I thought… I thought it might be useful.”

Feuilly’s heart is just about ready to crack open from all the joy inside it. Because that means- that means- that means maybe Enjolras was waiting for him, too.

“So, your gallery?” Enjolras asks again, and Feuilly nods.

“This is the opening, tonight. I only flew in a few hours ago.”

“I didn’t know,” he says, which is funny, because of course he didn’t know, that’s been the whole problem for the past four years. He continues, though. “I didn’t know about any of this, Grantaire just texted me the address and told me to come, and I-” He’s gazing at Feuilly, again, and Feuilly’s pretty sure he’s going to have to duck out of the opening early, especially when Enjolras brushes his hand against Feuilly’s own.

Feuilly swallows. “Good luck, I guess,” he says, but that doesn’t even begin to express it. “Listen, can we… can we leave?”

Enjolras begins to say, “Yes, we can-” but he stops, straightens up. “No, no, you need to stay. It’s your gallery opening. That’s important.”

Feuilly shoves his hands in his pockets, thinks it over, and Enjolras is probably completely right, he might meet the highest bidder here, he might make a connection, but still, what if-

If Enjolras leaves, he’s just going to have to grieve forever or something, and that’s not good for his artistic career, either. 

And it’s like Enjolras reads his thoughts, or maybe just like Enjolras is just as freaked out by all this as he is, because he leans in, presses a kiss just below Feuilly’s eye, and says, “I’ll stay. It’s almost over, anyways.”

“You’re sure?” Feuilly finds himself asking.

“I’m sure,” Enjolras says. And then he reaches out a hand, asking for something, and Feuilly’s just confused.

“Wh-”

“Your phone,” Enjolras says, and Feuilly fumbles to get it out, to pass it to Enjolras, and he doesn’t know what’s happening but it doesn’t matter, and-

And Enjolras opens the contacts app and writes in his name and his phone number and his address, even, and then he passes it back. “Don’t lose it,” he warns. 

Feuilly stares down at the screen, feels himself smile. “Definitely not.” He looks back up at Enjolras, and he’s a little frozen, now, too, because he’s happy, he’s elated, but he doesn’t… He doesn’t really know what to  _ do.  _ “Enjolras, I-”

Enjolras steps forward, rests a hand on the side of Feuilly’s neck, kisses him soft and brief and wonderful. “I’ll stay.”

And then Feuilly is being pulled away by the gallery manager, being introduced to a man in a suit even nicer than his, and he forces himself to compose himself, forces himself to mingle and schmooze, but that doesn’t mean that he can tear his eyes away from Enjolras, who is slowly making his way through the gallery, taking it all in with those serious eyes of his. 

The last hour of the opening feels like it stretches longer than the first three. It’s endless, almost unbearable, made lovely only by the occasional flash of golden hair that Feuilly catches glances of, somewhere across the room.

He checks his phone too much, watching the numbers creep closer and closer to midnight. And his heart is pounding, hammering, in his chest, but when the people start to leave, file out, he can’t spot Enjolras.

Shit.

He fumbles for his phone again, because maybe Enjolras just forgot, and maybe if he texts him he’ll come back, and he’s got his contact open when somebody taps him on the shoulder.

And oh, Enjolras is standing right behind him, grinning sheepishly, looking just as beautiful as he looked in that airport restaurant, four years ago. “I stayed,” he says.

“You stayed,” Feuilly echoes. 

Enjolras smiles a little broader. “Are you ready to go?”

Feuilly almost says  _ yes, absolutely,  _ almost just leaves, but he shakes his head, huffs a sigh. “I think the gallery guy wants to talk to me.”

But Enjolras just says, “Okay,” and reaches out to take Feuilly’s hand. “I don’t mind.”

And so Feuilly plays the part of the professional, and he talks about potential bidders and prices and magazines and what went well, and the only reason he can stand any of it right now is because Enjolras is still standing beside him, holding his hand. 

The gallery manager lets him go, eventually, and Feuilly gets the distinct impression that he ended the conversation sooner than intended out of sympathy, because Feuilly really can’t stop looking at Enjolras. But permission to leave is permission to leave, and he isn’t about to complain.

They leave the gallery but pause just outside the door. It’s a nice night, warm and still. Enjolras stands close, looks down at their hands, still linked together. “So,” he says. “Where to now?”

Feuilly stops, thinks. He hadn’t really gotten that far--he’d mostly just been caught up in his mind’s constant litany of  _ Enjolras, Enjolras, Enjolras is here. _ “We could go to my place,” he says, “If you don’t mind that I just got here today.”

Enjolras nods, just a little frantically. “Your place sounds good.”

They walk to the metro. Enjolras, on the way, slips his arm through the crook of Feuilly’s. It’s so achingly familiar that Feuilly can’t help but to turn his head, press a kiss to Enjolras’s temple.

Enjolras looks up at him, and he looks almost surprised, for a moment, and Feuilly’s heart sinks, because what if he overstepped, what if Enjolras likes him but it was too fast, what if-

Enjolras leans his head on Feuilly’s shoulder. “Is it weird to say that I really, really missed you?”

Feuilly lets out a breath, pulls Enjolras closer against him. “It’s not weird,” he says. “I’ve been fucking- fucking kicking myself for forgetting my jacket since I got on the plane. I missed you, too.”

Enjolras grins, holds on tighter.

On the metro, they sit flush against one another, ankles interlocked. They don’t talk, not really--it’s strange, and hard to know where to pick things back up from, but it’s okay, because that’s not what matters, right now-- except for when Enjolras says, as they’re getting off, “This is my stop, too, you know.”

Feuilly nods. “I know. I didn’t realize until I got here.”

“It’s funny,” Enjolras says. “It’s funny how close you are, now.”

Feuilly understands the sentiment completely.

They carry on like that, still a little loopy from the shock, all the way to Feuilly’s apartment (never mind that he had to look it up on the map on his phone, okay, he just moved, he’s allowed), and all the way up the stairs, and it isn’t until Feuilly opens the door, revealing boxes and furniture and everything, that Enjolras stops in his tracks, jolting Feuilly to a stop with him, and says, voice soft and cautious, “Feuilly, how long are you staying here?”

Feuilly frowns, because what does that even mean, what- “What do you mean? I- When I move, I guess, but I don’t…” he fades off, because Enjolras is staring at him with an indecipherable expression on his face. 

“You’re-” Enjolras clears his throat- “You moved here,” he says, and it’s not a question.

Feuilly nods, anyways. “Well, yeah. This is my apartment. The contract with the gallery is pretty long, and Paris has a better art scene than Warsaw, especially now that the fans are selling, so it just made sense to-”

“You  _ moved  _ here. You live here.” Enjolras really is so…  _ intense _ , sometimes.

“Yeah,” Feuilly says, “I-”

Enjolras is kissing him, then, kissing him so desperate and messy that he can hardly breathe, and he’s stumbling back with the force of it until Feuilly gets his hands on him, shifts it into something a little less wild. 

“Enj?”

“God,” Enjolras murmurs, up against his mouth. “God, you- you’re staying?”

And he’s pretty sure he understands all this, now, and he’s pretty sure that what Enjolras means is that he wants something… something  _ real,  _ from all of this, too, and that has Feuilly gasping for breath and kissing back, just as hard. “Staying,” he chokes out, when he comes up for air. 

Enjolras buries his face in Feuilly’s chest and lets out a sound suspiciously like a sob. He takes three deep, shuddering breaths, composes himself, then looks back up at Feuilly. “I don’t-” Feuilly slips a hand up beneath Enjolras’s shirt to rest it on his bare side, and he takes another one of those deep breaths, Feuilly can feel it. “I don’t know what you want out of this,” he says, remarkably professional for someone who was pressing Feuilly up against the wall just moments before. “But I thought-”

“I’m kind of ridiculously into you,” Feuilly admits. “Just for the record.”

He melts a little further into Feuilly, which kind of detracts from the whole  _ responsible communicator  _ thing. “Okay. Okay, um…”

“So maybe we could date?” Feuilly says, because he doesn’t think Enjolras is having an easy time with this, and this is important, and somebody needs to say it before they both chicken out and mess up like last time.

Enjolras just kind of folds himself back up against Feuilly, right there in the hall. “Yeah.”

Feuilly walks them both inside, letting Enjolras stay pressed against his chest. He shuffles them over to the couch, (and thanks God that he paid the extra money to the furniture people to have the big things delivered before he arrived), and pulls Enjolras down on it with him. “So,” he says, all casual, like this isn’t what he’s been dreaming about for years. “What have you been up to?”

Enjolras lets out a wet laugh, lets their ankles link together like they did on the metro. “Oh, you know. Writing. Activating.”

“I actually-” Feuilly carefully considers whether or not to finish the sentence before he decides that yes, actually, fuck shame and things like that. “I actually did know. I found some of your articles online. They’re really good. Powerful stuff.”

He frowns, looks a little bemused. “I don’t write anything in English. Or Polish.”

Feuilly lets his gaze drop to their hands, still linked together. “Yeah, I might have… I might have gotten a tutor.”

Enjolras jostles him a little, and when he looks up, he’s beaming. “You learned French.” It’s almost an accusation.

“Yeah, well,” Feuilly swallows, shrugs. 

He nods like he understands perfectly. Feuilly thinks, then, that he probably does.

They sit quietly. Quietly, until Enjolras nudges him with his elbow and points to the drawing on the wall. His portrait on the wall. “You kept it,” he says, like that’s all there is to it.

“I would’ve let you keep it if I didn’t want it.”

Enjolras stands. Feuilly stands, too, suddenly a little lost. Lost, until Enjolras pulls him in again and kisses him, all tender-like. Feuilly-

Well, Feuilly feels a little like he’s melting, that’s how wonderful this all is, but he settles for twisting a hand in Enjolras’s hair and letting the other wander, from his side to the small of his back to the back of his neck and back down, again. Enjolras strips him of his jacket, sets it aside, carefully straightened, on the armrest of the couch. 

Feuilly pulls him back into the kiss. And he wonders if they’re going to go any further, wonders if he’s going to have so scramble around in boxes in search of condoms (wonders if he even packed condoms, or if he’s going to have to make an undignified run to wherever’s open to buy some), but Enjolras keeps it slow, soft, perfect.

He kind of loves this best, right now.

Enjolras kisses him, and kisses him, and holds him tight like he’s not going to give him up again, and when they both pull away after God knows how long, they stay with their foreheads pressed together, just breathing. 

 

After, they sit out on the balcony, fingertips brushing on the bench. Enjolras is checking his messages-- apparently, Grantaire had informed not only Enjolras, but every single one of their friends, that Feuilly was in town. Enjolras reads the texts to Feuilly in the flat, matter-of-fact tone of a news broadcaster. It’s kind of the best thing he’s ever heard.

“Courfeyrac says congratulations,” he reads. “And then he sent another text that says  _ Congratulations on getting that DICK!,  _ all caps, exclamation point. And an aubergine emoji.”

Feuilly bites back a laugh. “Charming.”

“Mm.” He swipes to another message. “Combeferre says he’s very happy for us, and congratulations on your gallery opening.”

Feuilly always did like Combeferre. “Oh, tell him thank you.”

Enjolras sends the text, goes to the next. “Grantaire says I owe him, and I quote,  _ big time.  _ And that I am never allowed to tell him what to do again.”

Feuilly secretly thinks that’s a little fair, because he’s pretty sure he owes Grantaire  _ big time _ , too, even if he was an ass about it all.

“Joly thinks I’ve been kidnapped and that Grantaire helped.”

“Huh.”

Enjolras sets his phone aside. “I think I’ll deal with them tomorrow.”

“Good idea.”

He sighs, leans against Feuilly’s side, puts his head on his shoulder. “So we’re doing this?” he asks.

Feuilly’s pretty sure it’s more of a reaffirmation than a real question, but he nods, anyways. “Yeah, I guess we are.”

Enjolras takes his hand, weaves their fingers together, tilts his head to look up at Feuilly with those big, genuine eyes of his. “Do you think it will work?”

He sighs, thinks about it all--thinks about those forty hours in Paris, last time, and how  _ much  _ he felt, and how much he wanted to stay; thinks about the heart wrenching, agonizing flight back to Warsaw, without Enjolras’s number and without Enjolras; thinks about the way he never stopped thinking of him, never stopped wondering, never stopped having dreams about golden hair and delicate hands; thinks about struggling through that first article he found, and the way he found himself crying, by the end; thinks about the way he’s never even fucking  _ looked  _ at anyone, not since Enjolras; thinks about the absolute joy, absolute elation, of seeing Enjolras at the door of the gallery; thinks about this, just the two of them on the balcony, hand in hand. “Yeah,” he says, because he’s never been so certain of anything in his life. “I’m pretty sure it will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm incapable of writing anything with a sad ending because sad endings make me sad. but i had a grand old time writing this and it was horribly self-indulgent and i don't care because i do what i like!


End file.
